The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a prior decision favoring View Engineering Inc. of Simi Valley, Calif., in a patent infringement suit. Robotic Vision Systems Inc. of Canton, Mass., had filed a patent infringement suit against the company in 1995 over its full-tray scanning technique for semiconductor lead inspection.

The court agreed that the patent is invalid because Robotic Vision had sold the technology to Intel Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., more than one year before filing in June 1992.